Teenagers
who stand for honesty, decency and sanity

22 March 2004

The
Guardian

The
refusal of five patriots to serve in the army is a beacon of hope for
Israel

Israel's
occupation of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip has in the past
three years provoked increasingly violent resistance from Palestinians
- and
vocal criticism from inside Israel.
The most outspoken critics are five
teenagers who refuse to serve in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)
because it is
an army of occupation.

Thirty-six
years of policing the West Bank and
the
Gaza Strip have had a profound effect on the IDF, turning it into an
instrument
of territorial expansion and colonial oppression. The only people the
IDF
defends in the occupied territories are the Jewish settlers, and it is
remarkably indulgent towards the extremists among them. Towards the
Arab
population, on the other hand, it behaves with the utmost inhumanity.

In
recent months, 28 Israeli pilots and 13 members of an elite commando
unit have
joined the five refuseniks in protest against the army's conduct in the
occupied territories. Yet it is the courage of the five that is truly
astonishing because of the price they are prepared to pay for following
their
conscience.

The
teenagers, known as "the five", are Noam Bahat, Matan Kaminer, Adam
Maor, Haggai Matar and Shimri Tsameret. They were recently sentenced
each to a
year in prison, and the time they spent in detention pending trial will
not be
deducted. All refused to serve in the IDF because of the occupation and
all
were ready to do civilian service instead, but the offer was rejected.

In
defence of its draconian sentence, the court pointed out that the five
did not
refuse to serve as individuals, but rather as a group and with the
explicit
objective of bringing about a change in Israeli policy in the
territories. In
this respect, the court ruled, their actions strayed beyond the bounds
of
classic conscientious objection into the realm of civil disobedience.
In
support of this ruling, the court cited a letter signed by some of the
five
while still in high school.

The
letter, dated September
3 2001, was addressed to the prime minister,
Ariel Sharon, and was signed by 62 sixth-formers with Haggai Matar at
their
head. The signatories protested against "the aggressive and racist
policy
pursued by the Israeli government and its army" and gave notice that
they
did not intend to take part in the execution of this policy. "We
strongly
resist Israel's
pounding of human rights. Land
expropriations, arrests, executions without trial, house demolition,
closure,
torture, and the prevention of healthcare are only some of the crimes
the state
of Israel
carries out, in blunt violation of
international conventions it has ratified."

A
year later a second letter to the prime minister, signed by 320 men and
women
aged 16 to 18, accused Israel
more pointedly of war crimes, of
trampling over democratic values and of blatant abuses of Palestinians'
human
rights. The occupation, it said, is not only immoral; it is damaging
the
security of Israeli citizens.

The
letters, and attendant publicity, prompted a much tougher attitude
towards
conscientious objectors. Draft resisters were no longer released after
a few
months, but put on trial.

The
five presented themselves at their trial not as pacifists but as
conscientious
objectors and, specifically, as opponents of the occupation. They
insisted that
their conscience left them no choice but to refuse to enlist. The
verdict of
the three military judges was pronounced in a crowded courtroom in Jaffa
on January 4. They accepted the
argument that freedom of conscience is a right in Israeli law, only to
interpret it in a way that undermined its practical value; in essence,
they
accepted the prosecution's claim that exemption from military service
should be
granted only to total pacifists.

The
judges found the accused guilty of "a very grave crime which
constitutes a
manifest and concrete danger to our existence and our survival". This
statement is highly revealing of the mindset of the judges. In the
first place,
it is suffused with sanctimonious self-righteousness, depicting Israel
as the victim rather than the
aggressor. Second, it conveys a seriously skewed picture of the
military
balance of power, casting Israel
- the fourth greatest military power
on earth - as a little David up against a Palestinian Goliath. Third,
it shows
that the judges, unlike the accused, are unable or unwilling to
distinguish
between Israel
proper and the Zionist colonial
project beyond the green line.

The
judges wrote in their ruling that the sentence was intended to serve as
a
warning to others, especially in the light of the spate of reservists
from
elite units refusing to serve. In other words, the judges hoped that
inflicting
such a savage sentence would silence criticism of the army and deter
other
Israelis. Their reasoning betrayed their provenance as little cogs in a
huge
and heartless bureaucratic-military machine.

O
utside the courtroom, in an impromptu press conference, the refuseniks
declared
that they were proud of their actions and that they could continue to
challenge
the occupation until it ends. "We are being punished for saying the
word
occupation. So here I say it again: occupation, occupation,
occupation,"
said Matan Kaminer. "They commit war crimes and they expect us to keep
silent," added Haggai Matar. "But we will not be silent. We will
speak out against the occupation even when we pay a price."

The
lucidity, wisdom and courage of these young Israelis are impressive by
any
standard. All are patriots who love their country and are anxious to
serve it,
but only in a constructive civilian capacity and only inside its
legitimate
borders. They have chosen the hard way to fight for their ideals when
an easy
way out was available to them. They are a beacon of honesty, decency
and sanity
in a society that has lost its soul as a result of a prolonged, brutal
occupation.

Ariel
Sharon's brand of Zionism can only lead to more violence and bloodshed,
but the
refuseniks hold out hope that Israel
will return to its senses. They are
surely right to single out the occupation as the root of all evil. For
the
occupation not only negates the right of the Palestinians to national
self-determination; it also undermines the democratic foundations of
the state
of Israel.
Young and inexperienced as they are,
the refuseniks instinctively grasp the truth of Karl Marx's dictum that
a
people that oppresses another cannot itself remain free.

Supporters
of the five have prepared a petition to be sent to Sharon,
stating that his government is
jailing them for their convictions, and calling on him to set them
free. To
sign this petition, visit www.refuz.org.ilm - the conscientious
objectors'
website. These objectors deserve all the sympathy and support they can
get, for
their struggle is not for themselves, but on behalf of a much higher
ideal:
recovering their country's humanity.